Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 17: A Plane Crashes

Until some months later, when she finally called, too upset almost to speak. I remember it vividly, for I had just heard the news too, although I had not made the same connection Harriet had.

It was a Tuesday, it was the 19th of September 1961, and Dag Hammarskjold’s plane had just gone down near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia. He was presumed — and later confirmed — dead.

“He’s dead,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

Then, “I killed him.”

“What?” was the best I could muster.

“I wished him dead,” she said. “I have killed him.” She pronounced a verdict.

“Harriet,” I said. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Dag Hammarskjold. Don’t you remember?” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“We met,” she said. “His diary. Remember?”

“No.” But that was no longer entirely true: her letter was coming back to me.

“When we met,” she said. “I wished him dead so I could read his diary. I wished him dead, and my wish has been granted.”

“Don’t be silly,” I heard myself saying. I don’t think she heard me, though.

“He told me about his diary, how he was not going to publish it until after he died, and my wish, at that moment, was for him to be dead so I could read it.”

“His plane crashed,” I said.

“He was such a remarkable man,” she said. “Such a true…,” she didn’t find the right word. “He was so real,” she said instead. “He knew something. He had found what I need to find. And he had written it all down for me, only he wouldn’t show it to me, not then, not until he was dead, he said. And now he is.”

“His plane crashed,” I said again.

She heard me this time. “It was my wish. I didn’t specify how.”

“It was presumably shot down,” I said. That was the conclusion of the disaster reports.

“I didn’t specify how,” she said again. “Just that he would.”

“It was just a thought you had,” I said. “You said so.”

“It was a wish,” she said.

“You didn’t mean it.”

“Of course I meant it. It worked.” And that proved it.

And put so plainly, so matter-of-factly, I was at loss for an argument against it.

I changed tack. “Harriet,” I said. “Why have you not called, or written? Why did you disappear?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

“You have to.”

“Not now. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I had no idea what to say to that. So instead I delivered on my repeated promise to my grandmother: “Madhuri wants to see you.”

“I see,” she said after a short pause. She did not seem all that surprised.

“That’s Jiddu’s mother.”

“I know,” she said.

“She wants you to come to India.”

“I see,” she said again. As if accepting something inevitable.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Should I be?”

“Yes,” I said. “You should. I mean, why not? You don’t know her, do you?”

“I know of her.”

“Did you know that she wants to see you?”

“Someone wants to see me.” It was a plain statement.

“Someone?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know how. I just do.”

“Do you know why this someone want to see you?”

“Not really.” Then, “To ask me questions, I think.”

“Why?”

But she chose to ignore that. Instead, “Many people want to see me. All the time. They all want to talk to me. I want to be left alone.”

“Madhuri is not many people,” I said. “She is my grandmother, Jiddu’s mother, and she says it is very important. She has called about it several times. ‘Tell her I want to see her,’ she says. Over and over again.”

“Did she tell you why?”

“No.”

“She didn’t say anything about why she wants to see me?”

“No.”

“Do you know?”

I did not, and said so. But then I added, a hunch more than anything else: “I think it’s about trolls.”

The line went dead. Harriet had hung up. I was still sitting, back against the wall, listening to nothing. I finally collected myself and put the receiver back on the hook.

I went looking for her letter, found it, and read: Then he tells me that he was thinking of publishing it, but not until after he’s dead, as a sort of requiem, that’s what he said, but I think perhaps he meant an epitaph, but that’s beside the point. The point is, and this is what’s so terrible, that as soon as he said that, even as he said it, the moment the meaning of what he said was clear to me, I wished him dead. Wished him dead, Nachiketa, just so that I could read the diary. The thought, the wish came so fast, so unbidden, so out of nowhere that I know it was a true wish, and I’m so ashamed. And I’m also a little scared, for sometimes my wishes come true.

The phone rang again.

“Did you tell her?”

“Did I tell who what?”

“Jiddu’s mom about Mr. Hammarskjold.”

“I’m sure she knows.”

“That I killed him?” A soft scream.

“No, that he’s dead.”

“You didn’t tell her that I wished him dead?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell her. Please.”

“Of course not.”

“I will come.”

I was about to ask for her new telephone number, but she had hung up again.

Three days later she was sitting in my flat, older, distraught, darker somehow.

“You never called,” I said. Peevishly, which was exactly how I felt, and with a right to. I was her son, after all.

“I know,” she answered.

“It’s been a year and a half,” I pointed out.

“I know.”

“Not a word. What about my letters? Did you receive them?”

“Yes.”

“Did you read them?”

“Yes.”

“But no thoughts of answering them?”

“Thoughts, yes. Ink, no,” without a smile, and still wearing her sunglasses though it was quite gloomy inside.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling more like a scorned lover than anything else.

“Nothing happened,” she said.

“You just didn’t feel like calling?” meaning to hurt her.

“I had my reasons.”

“Would you tell them to me?”

“No.”

“I am your son, Harriet. You have shut me out again. You changed your telephone number and made yourself impossible to reach.”

“I know.”

“But why?”

“I had my reasons.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because that is what I mean.”

“I am your son,” I complained again.

“I know,” she said. And without a trace of venom.

“Didn’t I deserve to hear from you?”

“Yes you did.”

“So then why?” I asked again.

To which she did not again answer that she had her reasons. She didn’t have to.

I cooked us dinner, which we ate in near-silence, me locked in battle with questions, she locked, period.

She removed her sunglasses as she sat down, and I saw how she had aged: The crow’s feet at the outer corners of her eyes, the tightness around her upper lip, a hardness to her eyes, and, yes, that too, a trace: fear.

She liked what I had made, soup, toasted cheese sandwiches with beans. Very English, she said. She ate everything. Hungry, she explained, looking up at me over a large bite.

We had coffee and I got out some shortbread, rich and buttery, which she liked as well. She drank two cups of coffee, and then wondered where she was going to sleep.

I made the travel arrangements the following morning, while Harriet was still asleep. She had told me that she would pay. First class, she added. We were to leave as soon as possible.

She had signed and given me a blank check to cover the cost.

The lady at the travel bureau was very helpful, and very efficient.

We had a little over four hours to make our flight to Rome from Heathrow. Being a Saturday we should make it just fine, the lady and I agreed, not so much traffic.

A two-hour layover in Rome, and then on to Teheran. From there via Kabul and Bombay to Madras, and from Madras by train to Madanapalle. Everything was in place by the time she awoke.

Then I called my office, and I was glad to reach Lana, who worked every other Saturday. This was apparently her day on, as she called it.

“Something’s come up,” I said.

“No,” she said, alarmed and caring.

“I have to go to India.”

“India?”

“My grandmother,” I said.

“Dead?” she wondered.

“No. But very ill.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“I should be back in a week or so. Please tell them.” Meaning either Hawkes or Rand.

She promised she would, and wished me good luck with my grandmother. Lying about Madhuri’s health was not my greatest moment, but the truth was far too complicated to embark upon.

Then I put in a call to Madhuri, but of course there was no answer. I called Nilima, who was not in, but one of her sons was. Apparently Nilima and Madhuri were gone for the day, not sure where. So I asked him to please, very important, tell Madhuri that Nachiketa is coming to visit in two days. Yes, coming to visit.

Nachiketa. With Harriet. Harriet. Yes, with Harriet. In two days very important. Promise.

He promised many times and perhaps there was a chance he would not forget.

To be honest, I hadn’t noticed it before for it was never very apparent — but it’s the kind of thing that makes itself plain when you share small quarters with a woman, even if it’s your mother: she didn’t wear any makeup. She was in and out of the bathroom in less than ten minutes, and that’s including a shower. How’s that for efficiency, and certainly no time for makeup.

She donned her large, dark sunglasses and wrapped her head in a gray scarf before we headed down for the taxi to take us to Heathrow. I held the cab door open for her and she slipped in and sunk away in a corner of the back seat. As if pursued.

I followed and sat down beside her. Stole a glance, several. She was obviously who she was, but she was not the same woman I had spent Christmas 1958 with, and that wonderful summer week in 1959. She was remote, hardened, and her face almost struck me as calculating.

Once on the airplane, she seemed to relax a little. No one had spotted her, as she put it, and she was happy about that. It was always such a burden to her, always present, this fear of being spotted — on this trip even more so, I gathered, for this Indian man by her side would be hard to explain. At times, though, I have to admit, I wondered if she didn’t also get a little upset if nobody did recognize her. I think she drew at least a little sustenance from her fame, and fame is not a valid currency among those who have no idea who you are.

She had a whiskey and I had a Coca-Cola. Free. She had a second whiskey, and with it relaxed a little more.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked, quite suddenly, apropos of nothing.

I scrambled about a little for what she could be referring to. “If you’re asking me, do I believe that you killed Dag Hammarskjold, the answer is no. No, I don’t believe that you did.”

Then I added, with a certainty I didn’t know I had, “Causing things is a very conscious act, a very aware act, and the more you are able to cause, the more aware you are of this fact: they go hand in hand.”

I was aware that I sounded perfectly preachy, a little like Jiddu, but I had her ear. She looked me straight in the eye and waited for me to finish my piece.

“I do not think you can cause something like a man’s death by a reflex thought like the one you had, one that you’re almost unaware of thinking. I think it takes awareness and responsibility and conscious ownership of the act.”

She looked at me a little longer, making sure I was quite finished, then sighed heavily. Then, as if she had heard nothing of what I just said, she turned to look out the window at the sea of cloud that stretched like a gray field all the way to the horizon. “Have you ever wished someone dead?” she asked to the air, but it was meant for me. To me the novice, who had spoken out of turn.

The image arrived quite unbidden: I’m on the ground, coughing dust, fending off a combination of fists and flat hand-slaps from Ganaraj, who is sitting on top of me. Pale Eyes, he says, over and over, and no matter how I wriggle and push I cannot get him off of me, and he keeps pelting me, though without inflicting too much damage. It’s more like a physical teasing than anything else, but painful still, and embarrassing in the extreme. And looking up into those dark, grinning eyes above a dusty nose, above very white, cruel teeth and under a cloud of black hair, I wanted nothing more from the Creator of this World than the death of Ganaraj. That’s it. I would settle for any kind of life going forward, a frog’s even, a mosquito’s, as long as Ganaraj would cease then and there.

The wish was not expressed this way, in words, of course — it was deeper than that, more encompassing — but I don’t think there was a single molecule in me that didn’t partake in my secret homicide.

Well, he didn’t die, but he did stop hitting me. That of course may have been a coincidence, but by the way he looked at me — a little uneasy I would say — it may not have been. His molecules, on some wavelength, apparently received what mine had just transmitted, and he backed off.

Later, of course, once he realized I could talk to snakes, he was dead scared of me, and for good reason, but that was later.

“Yes,” I said, after what could have been ten minutes, but probably was only one.

“Then you know,” she said, and looked back out the window. “He was the world’s only chance for peace,” she added to the clouds, but I overheard, just like I was meant to.

She turned to me again, looked at me closely over the rim of her sunglasses. “What happened to your wish?” she asked.

“He’s still alive,” I said. Then I told her what had happened.

“Then I am a better wisher than you are,” is all she answered.

By that time, unfortunately, our flight attendant had recognized Harriet and then made the gargantuan mistake of asking for an autograph. It ruined Harriet’s flight. She refused, of course — she always did — and I’m sure it ruined the attendant’s flight as well, for Harriet did not as much as look at her again; instead she pointedly ignored her by turning toward the window whenever she got close. Harriet even refused the dinner, silently.

Meanly, I thought.

I had a hard time making myself heard through that protective barricade, and had to say things twice for the rest of the flight.

By the time we took off from Bombay, we were both exhausted. Neither of us had slept well. Harriet was probably a little hung over from several more whiskeys between Rome and Bombay, and she had soured, and didn’t talk much.

Luckily, there had been no more “spottings,” or if there had been, the crew had been professional about it.

The plane landed perfectly in Madras, but that’s where, as they say, all hell broke loose. Word had gotten out — had either been radioed ahead by the plane or called ahead from Bombay, who knows — that Harriet was on the plane. The bloody press was all over the airport. I was not prepared for this, and even less equipped to handle it. It was totally unexpected to Harriet as well, and I believe she was quite shocked. She was very tired, she had let some sort of guard down, and she was having trouble raising it again.

And here, there was no one to help us. No managers, no agents, no large protective limousine drivers. It was just me and Harriet and about fifty reporters.

What on earth, they wanted to know, was Harriet Brown doing in India? In Madras of all places? Was she staying here? Where? With whom? For how long? Was she doing a new film? And who, they wanted to know, was that Indian man traveling with her? The insinuations were not kind.

She, of course, was not about to answer any questions, and I was completely at sea. I had no idea what to do.

They say the English reporter knows no shame, and is the world’s most intrusive, British manners notwithstanding. That is not true. The English reporter does not hold a candle to his Indian colleague, especially the Madras reporter.

This grew very apparent, very fast, for we were soon cornered, and I saw Harriet slip from annoyance, to outrage, to fear, in a matter of minutes. I followed her, but from fear I surfaced again at rage, at Ganaraj sitting on top of me, at making my life a living hell, at fifty Ganarajas screaming questions at my mother. I heard myself first say, then shout over the sea of questions: “You are a disgrace to India. A disgrace. This is the kind of welcome you give a legend? I am sure there are foreign reporters here and soon the world will know how uncivilized, how barbarian, how childish, how unworthy the Indian press still is. How behind the times, how primitive.”

I was looking for words I knew would insult, and insult as much as possible. And it worked. The school of uncivilized reporters slowly metamorphosed to angry mob as their attention shifted from Harriet to me, who dared call into question their divine right to rudeness.

“You soil the journalist’s profession,” I shouted. “You are no better than beggars, untouchables. Do not pride yourself on being Harijans, you are no Harijans, you are less than that, you are caste-less vermin, feces on the proud writer’s profession.”

That about did it.

The reporter closest to me, a short, stocky man with greasy hair, came at me with arms flailing, and I raised mine in defense. Then many things occurred at once.

A camera flashed. It turned out to belong to a Daily News reporter from London, here initially to see Harriet, but now set on memorializing the outrage. Several of the local reporters recognized him and set out after him to destroy the evidence. Another camera flashed. This one belonged to what later turned out to be a Bombay reporter, out to make his Madras counterpart look ridiculous (and with some success), but nobody took much notice, since he did not stand out. Others, while making sure that my comments were disseminated to everyone — embellished, I am sure — were fighting their way in my direction to get, as they say, a piece of me. Then another flash. This from The Times, and some, recognizing that reporter, went after him, yanked his camera from him, threw it to the floor and destroyed it. Meanwhile the Daily News reporter was now running full speed toward the lounge area, pursued by five or six locals. He managed to escape, but only with the help of the finally appearing police.

The same police who in the end also rescued me and Harriet, who, shocked at the eruption of violence, had fled to the side, suddenly forgotten — according to plan, I am quite proud to add.

A few had gotten to me, or not so few, Ganarajas all, with fists that hurt a little more that his, but not too badly. None drew blood, and all my teeth survived intact.

More police arrived. Arrests were made, I read later. Airport officials, who by now had judged it safe to make an appearance, arrived on the scene as well. Apologies were offered, so very, very sorry, ma’am. Anything they could do to be of assistance? Yes, I told them, and we were helped to a limousine, well, large car, that took us to the train station. Police there escorted us onto the train, and we eventually settled down in a reasonably nice compartment that said First Class — although that was just a parody.

I locked the door and pulled the curtains down.

“Nice place,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“Thank you,” she said. “You did a very brave thing back there.”

I looked up at her. One of my eyes was swelling shut. The other, I realized, already had. I hadn’t even felt those blows. I had a hard time making her out through the one closing eye. I could not see whether she was still in shock, angry, or what.

“I did what had to be done,” I said.

“Well, thank you,” she said again. And that was that.

The conductor saw to my eyes with a towel and cold water. It helped.

We used one of Harriet’s old tricks and got off at Punganuru, where no one would expect us, and from there hired a taxi for the last twenty-five or so kilometers. It worked. We arrived at Madhuri’s house unspotted, but very tired.

I later found out there had been a crowd at Madanapalle Road, the main station, including a cluster of reporters. Word does spread, especially in India. Harriet was still very big news in these parts.

© Wolfstuff