‘I don’t know.’
‘Why did you move your seat at that time?’
‘I don’t know. I must have sensed something.’
‘What did she say to you?’
‘Nothing much. She got her seat-belt mixed with mine. Then she was carrying on a bit with the man at the end seat.’
Now, as the plane taxis along the runway, he gets up. Lise and the man in the aisle seat look up at him, taken by surprise at the abruptness of his movements. Their seat-belts fasten them to their seats and they are unable immediately to make way for him, as he indicates that he wants to pass. Lise looks, for an instant, slightly senile, as if she felt, in addition to bewilderment, a sense of defeat or physical incapacity. She might be about to cry or protest against a pitiless frustration of her will. But an air-hostess, seeing the standing man, has left her post by the exit—door and briskly comes up the aisle to their seat. She says. ‘The aircraft is taking off. Will you kindly remain seated and fasten your seat-belt?’
The man says, in a foreign accent, ‘Excuse me, please. I wish to change.’ He starts to squeeze past Lise and her companion.
The air-hostess, evidently thinking that the man has an urgent need to go to the lavatory, asks the two if they would mind getting up to let him pass and return to their seats as quickly as possible. They unfasten their belts, stand aside in the aisle, and he hurries up the plane with the air-hostess leading the way. But he does not get as far as the toilet cubicles. He stops at an empty middle seat upon which the people on either side, a white-haired fat man and a young girl, have dumped hand-luggage and magazines. He pushes himself past the woman who is seated on the outside seat and asks her to remove the luggage. He himself lifts it, shakily, his solid strength all gone. The air-hostess turns to remonstrate, but the two people have obediently made the seat vacant for him. He sits, fastens his seat-belt, ignoring the air-hostess, her reproving, questioning protests, and heaves a deep breath as if he had escaped from death by a small margin.
Lise and her companion have watched the performance. Lise smiles bitterly.
The dark man by her side says, ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He didn’t like us,’ Lise says.
‘What did we do to him?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. He must be crazy. He must be nutty.’
The plane now comes to its brief halt before revving up for the takeoff run. The engines roar and the plane is off, is rising and away. Lise says to her neighbour, ‘I wonder who he is?’
‘Some kind of a nut,’ says the man. ‘But it’s all the better for us, we can get acquainted.’ His stringy hand takes hers; he holds it tightly. ‘I’m Bill,’ he says. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lise.’ She lets him grip her hand as if she hardly knows that he is holding it. She stretches her neck to see above the heads of the people in front, and says, ‘He’s sitting there reading the paper as if nothing had happened.’
The stewardess is handing out copies of newspapers. A steward who has followed her up the aisle stops at the seat where the dark-suited man has settled and is now tranquilly scanning the front page of his newspaper. The steward inquires if he is all right now, sir?
The man looks up with an embarrassed smile and shyly apologizes.
‘Yes, fine. I’m sorry …’
‘Was there anything the matter, sir?’
‘No, really. Please. I’m fine here, thanks. Sorry … it was nothing, nothing.’
The steward goes away with his eyebrows mildly raised in resignation at the chance eccentricity of a passenger. The plane purrs forward. The no-smoking lights go out and the loudspeaker confirms that the passengers may now unfasten their seat-belts and smoke.
Lise unfastens hers and moves to the vacated window seat.
‘I knew,’ she says. ‘In a way I knew there was something wrong with him.’
Bill moves to sit next to her in the middle seat and says, ‘Nothing wrong with him at all. Just a fit of puritanism. He was unconsciously jealous when he saw we’d hit it off together, and he made out he was outraged as if we’d been doing something indecent. Forget him; he’s probably a clerk in an insurance brokers’ from the looks of him. Nasty little bureaucrat. Limited. He wasn’t your type.’
‘How do you know?’ Lise says immediately as if responding only to Bill’s use of the past tense, and, as if defying it by a counter-demonstration to the effect that the man continues to exist in the present, she half-stands to catch sight of the stranger’s head, eight rows forward in a middle seat, at the other side of the aisle, now bent quietly over his reading.
‘Sit down,’ Bill says. ‘You don’t want anything to do with that type. He was frightened of your psychedelic clothes. Terrified.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes. But I’m not.’
The stewardesses advance up the aisle bearing trays of food which they start to place before the passengers. Lise and Bill pull down the table in front of their seats to receive their portions. It is a midmorning compromise snack composed of salami on lettuce, two green olives, a rolled-up piece of boiled ham containing a filling of potato salad and a small pickled something, all laid upon a slice of bread. There is also a round cake, swirled with white and chocolate cream, and a corner of silver-wrapped processed cheese with biscuits wrapped in cellophane. An empty plastic coffee cup stands by on each of their trays.
Lise takes from her tray the transparent plastic envelope which contains the sterilized knife, fork and spoon necessary for the meal. She feels the blade of the knife. She presses two of her fingers against the prongs of her
