Cockpit (9 page)

I was curious to know whom she was seeing. I began following
her and found out she was being tailed by two detectives from the vice squad. I thought they might have discovered drug addicts among Theodora’s research subjects, and since an investigation could also involve me, I decided to steer clear of her.

For the next few months, I moved from one to another of my apartments. I made no attempt to see Theodora or any of the people she had introduced me to. Late one night, I returned to the apartment where she had once visited me. An envelope written in her familiar scrawl had been pushed under the door. She wrote that she had given birth to my son and was enclosing a picture of him. It was a large glossy photograph of a newborn baby lying in an incubator with its face partly obscured. I could tell from the sharpness and angle of the photo that it had been taken by a camera used for scientific documentation.

Suspecting that the child in the photo was not Theodora’s, I took the picture to the largest photo laboratory in the city and asked to have it traced. Two days later, I was notified that the picture had been taken by a photographer specializing in textbook illustrations. When I went to his studio, he identified the photograph as one he had taken about ten years earlier and sold many times for use in medical books. He recognized my copy as one of two hundred recently delivered to an uptown address and gave me the catalogue number of the original stock photo.

I called Theodora to tell her I had received the photograph. She said the baby was well, although the delivery had been difficult. Postnatal difficulties had led to some disturbing test results, including the possibility that she might have bone cancer. Afraid of what might happen to her son if she died, she told me she had found foster parents for him in a small suburban town. She still visited the child, but as her health failed, her trips became more and more exhausting and infrequent.

I asked when the child’s photograph had been taken and
she told me a day or two after the delivery, adding that she had sent the picture to all her friends. I promised to see her when I was next in town.

It occurred to me that Theodora might have told her friends that I was the father of her child. To put an end to her story, I typed short, anonymous notes to all the people whose addresses I had once copied from her address book. I stated that Theodora’s child did not exist, that the photograph she had sent was of another child and had been taken ten years before. To substantiate this accusation, I gave the photo’s catalogue number and the name of the studio where the original could be found. I mailed the notes on the day I left the country.

Returning from Europe almost a year later, I was walking down Broadway when I recognized a black girl to whom Theodora had once introduced me. The girl asked if I knew Theodora was dying of cancer in a charity ward. Although it was very late, I went directly to the hospital. The night nurse was hesitant to let me into the terminal ward, but when I told her I had arrived in New York that very night and was the woman’s only living relative, she allowed me to see her.

I walked down the darkened center aisle of the room, looking at each patient until I found her. Next to her bed stood an oxygen tank from which two extending tubes had been inserted into her nostrils. Her yellow skin sagged on the bones of her face, and the wig had slipped back, exposing her bald scalp. She had no eyebrows or eyelashes left. The thin sheet that covered her emphasized her sharp, fleshless bones. On the night table, among the make-up creams, magazines and books, I noticed a Polaroid photograph of a baby in a playpen. I left the room without waking her.

The following day, I returned and spoke to the doctor in charge. He told me Theodora had been hospitalized when her pelvis collapsed. Initially, she had been given injections
to slow the cancer, but since she had entered the terminal phase she was being given only strong pain killers. He said it was now a matter of days.

I found her propped up against a low headrest, staring at the wall. As I approached the bed, she shifted her gaze and looked at me. Slowly lifting her hand, she centered the wig on her skull. While I spoke, she attempted a smile. The corners of her lips stretched sideways under the oxygen tubes as she strained to speak, but could not. Her eyes returned to the wall, and she refused to look at me again. As I left, I asked the nurse to call me if there was a change. By the end of the next week, she called to say that Theodora was dead.

Weeks later, I received a message from a law firm, informing me that Theodora had left me all her books. The lawyer said he had obtained my phone number from the nurse at the hospital and asked if I was related to Theodora. I remarked I was not and that as far as I knew she did not have any living relatives, but the lawyer answered that she had a one-year-old child. I told him that her pregnancy had been a hoax, but he insisted that Theodora had given birth to a boy. I explained how she had sent out to friends a professional photograph of another baby; he replied that she had done so because her own child had been born cross-eyed, but that an operation had since corrected the defect.

I asked about the boy’s father. The lawyer paused, then said Theodora had not named him. Furthermore, it had been agreed that the child’s foster parents would never tell the boy he had been adopted. After I asked where the child was, the lawyer said he was not free to tell me.

Soon after Theodora’s death, I took out one of the nurses from the hospital. She said the doctors had told Theodora that she was dying five months before she actually died. Since then she had been aware that the injections would do nothing but extend her agony. When the nurse had asked
Theodora whether there were any relatives or friends she would like to have visit her, she answered there was only one man, the father of her child. She refused to contact him, but she was sure he would come. Even when Theodora was being fed intravenously and had to be given oxygen, she would still prepare for the man’s visit. She wore her make-up and wig all the time, and when, as a result of hormone injections, she began to grow a dark mustache and a slight beard, she diligently shaved every morning.

Months went by, but the man did not come. Theodora stopped caring about her appearance. When the young nurse brought her a television set, she refused to watch it. Theodora told the nurse that, although her body was dying, her brain was still alive and she didn’t have time to waste. She was too busy looking at her memories, each memory as fresh as a young green sprout.

I had Theodora to thank for leading me to the Service. She had helped me find a shield for the self I wanted to hide.

I was one of many Service operatives assigned to track down an agent of ours who had disappeared five years earlier. I had met him socially many times during his Service days, and, since he had never known I was an agent, it was thought that I would have an excellent chance of making contact and eliminating him. We had no information on his present whereabouts, name or occupation, and not even any assurance that he was alive.

After months of pursuing one futile lead after another, I was ready to admit defeat and suggested that the search be abandoned. My report was accepted, and I was reassigned.

A year later, in early spring, I was passing through the Val d’Anniviers. As I was driving toward a small mountain resort, an unusual sports car sped by. I recalled that the agent used to drive an earlier model of that same car, in the very same color. I also noticed that the spare tire was attached to the roof in exactly the same manner as it had been on the agent’s previous car. I thought it would be
strange for the agent to stick to old habits if he were trying to erase all contact with his past. Still, I felt he might be behind the wheel. My own car was not fast enough to catch up, though. I reached the village and searched every parking lot and public garage but failed to locate the car. I was about to give up when I saw the agent crossing the street, but by the time I parked my own car he had disappeared. I decided to remain there and make contact.

I rented a room in a small hotel and strolled around the town. Outside a large camera shop, I paused to study pictures taken by local photographers in the town’s restaurants, nightclubs and hotels. I was glancing idly at the display when I spotted a picture of him. He looked years younger in the photo than he had during his final Service days. His face was completely unlined; his once thinning hair was thick and full. I assumed he was wearing a toupee and make-up. I went into the shop so that I could check the back of the print and find the name of the hotel where it had been taken.

I purchased the photograph, took it to the hotel and asked the concierge to identify the man in the picture, saying he resembled an American friend I hadn’t seen for some time. The concierge gave me the name under which the agent was registered and I pretended to recognize it. I telephoned the room, and when the agent answered I called him by the name he had been using when we last met. He was surprised, but he had no reason to suspect my motives. We arranged to have lunch together in the hotel restaurant.

When we met later, I told him the strange story of how I had come to find him. I mentioned I had seen him in his car. He laughed and explained he had not owned a car for years and was now driving a rented sedan. Furthermore, he told me, at the time I thought I had seen him on the street he had been lounging by the hotel pool. But the photograph was unmistakably of him. We joked about the strange coincidences, but I believed nothing he told me.

I asked him why he had left America. He said he had
run into some problems five years earlier, and decided to settle in Europe, where life was easier. He had changed his name to simplify his existence and, when he was able to afford it, had undergone radical cosmetic surgery. The changes of country, name and appearance, he said, had altogether altered his view of himself. Looking in a mirror no longer made him self-conscious, and he could now enjoy dating girls half his age.

Throughout lunch, he continued to reminisce; then he asked what was I doing in the mountains. I said I had just completed an exhausting business trip and, since I was already in Europe, I’d decided to spend a couple of weeks relaxing in the Alps. After lunch, I suggested sightseeing. I knew that his sedan was equipped with a standard an-titheft device. If the ignition was off, the steering mechanism automatically locked in position, immobilizing the car’s front wheels. I asked if he would drive, since he knew the area.

We drove up a steep road for almost forty minutes, chatting and occasionally stopping to admire the view. As we passed a school where small girls were playing in the yard, he remarked how sad it was that both of us might die before these girls became women.

The road ended where the glacier began. We drove back along a narrow road with no safety railings and almost no shoulder. I watched him snap his seat belt on but made no move to fasten mine. As we drove on, he told me about an old mountaineer he had once known in Vercorin who had trained an eagle to hover high above him as he climbed. Whenever the mountaineer was in trouble, the bird flew off to alert guides who came immediately to the man’s rescue.

I half-listened to his story. The car made two hairpin turns and was about to enter a third when I quickly leaned forward, placed one hand on the door handle and, with the other hand, switched off the ignition. The agent did not seem to grasp what had happened. Just as the engine died
and the steering wheel locked, I opened my door and rolled out onto the ground. The car shot across the road, and dived over the shoulder. I heard a crash from the chasm below, followed by a small rockslide. When I got up, painfully aware that I had bruised my thigh and knee, I peered over the edge. On the lower slopes everything was quiet. There was no trace of the car.

I walked down the road for about an hour without encountering anyone. I reached the highway, pretending to be an afternoon stroller, and hitched a ride back to the village.

The evening news reported that a man had died when his car veered off a mountain pass and crashed several hundred feet below in a ravine. The following day, another announcement stated that the driver’s partly burned body was being held at the local morgue pending identification. Promptly, I called my contact to inform him I had eliminated the agent, and he complimented me on my success.

As I walked through the village, I saw the sports car that had originally alerted me that my quarry was nearby. The car was driven by a young man who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the dead agent. As I turned into my hotel, pondering that coincidence, I nearly bumped into a man with the agent’s exact build. At that close range his face and hair only roughly resembled the dead man’s, but as he walked away, I realized that this was the man I initially took for the agent: from a distance they were identical.

A day later, on the terrace of an old hotel, I was approached by a stranger who told me in code that he was from the Service. He sat down, ordered a beer and tersely congratulated me on achieving success where so many others had failed. Then he asked me how I had been put onto the man’s trail. I told him about the weird string of coincidences that had led me to him.

The operative looked at me unconvinced, then reminded
me that the agent had been underground for years. He suggested that I must have had help in finding him and insisted that the Service be told who the informants were.

I repeated what I had already told him. He remained skeptical, but instead of persisting with questions, he proceeded to fill me in on my next assignment, for which I was to be sent to Indonesia.

After arriving in Djakarta, I attempted to contact our resident agent in order to begin my assignment. Under my cover identity, to prepare for which I was given a suitcase full of books and papers, I was a member of an international group of psychiatrists and anthropologists who had come to compare primitive concepts of madness with psychiatric theories of emotional disturbance. If the tribal term “illness of the spirit” described the same behavioral states as the Western concept of “insanity,” we would be able to define mental imbalance as a culturally independent phenomenon.