A Pilgrim’s Digression

Your Self, or Something Like It

“We are fast traveling toward a moment when we won’t know why we should do anything and won’t be able to imagine why those who devoted their lives to doing something ever did what they did.” Joseph Natoli, Postmodern Journies

–Where am I? What happened?

A voice, calm, professorial, answers.

–To answer the latter question first, an explosion. And now the first: falling through the air.

–I can’t breathe.

–You left your emergency oxygen tank in the plane. Also your flight jacket. Are you cold, Henry?

–Yes. Who are you?

–Your self, Henry Rann. Or some thing like it.”

–I can’t breathe.

–Describe how you feel in a simile, not too clich�d.

–I feel like I’m being forced to run a marathon and I can’t stop and catch my breath.

–A little clich�d, but the event in which you are now involved is so extraordinary no one will care.

–Am I dead or alive?

–It could go either way, really. Check your altimeter.
Henry looked at the altimeter on his wrist.

–Jesus!

–”Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary…. He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.”

–What?

–Better make a decision: pull the ripcord now, at 20,000 feet, or you might lapse into an oxygen-depleted coma before you reach the 10,000 feet mark.

–Yes.

Henry pulled the cord, much too soon. He remained above the clouds, gliding gently downward now at roughly 15 miles per hour.

–I feel so sleepy.

–Try to stay awake.

–I shouldn’t have pulled the cord so soon.

–You would have died anyway if you had not pulled it.

–I feel good, though. It’s like an after-sex kind of sleepiness.

–Euphoria brought about by lack of oxygen.

Henry faded, became translucent.

In a time, in a place, a small boy, Henry Rann. Henry Rann in a fit of maliciousness buries a live toad, then feels remorse but cannot find the spot to dig it up again.

–Henry.

A woman’s voice.

In a time, in a place, the little boy Henry stands in a running stream, dipping a line with a bobber under rocks, fishing for small mouth bass. Grandpa wades ahead in the cool of the shady creek.

–Henry.

A woman’s voice.

Henry is surrounded by a white fog through which he drifts silently.

–Am I dead now? Is this Heaven? Or Hell?

Henry is smiling, and he thinks, I am going to Heaven or Hell smiling. He feels uncontrollably happy to be dying. Such a pleasant experience! We all ought to do it!

–Henry, I love you.

A woman’s voice.

Henry cried joyfully; his tears froze on his cheeks. Henry laughed.

In his head a Christmas carol he had heard two days ago began playing, sounding as it did then, broadcast through tinny speakers into the base PX.

–…joyful and triumphant…

Oh how happy he felt! Joyful and triumphant, a trumpet blast in the sky above Czechoslovakia.

His feet, and then his entire body exited the clouds, and Henry felt like a man coming out of a long, heady drunk.

–People would pay good money for this.

Self did not answer.

–I’m alive! Apparently.

His breathing was still labored, but much improved. Below him stretched the North Bohemian countryside, winter brown but gorgeous in the afternoon sunshine and the afterglow of Henry’s euphoria.

–Amazing! Wow!

And the silence. Would he ever know a silence like this again?
At some point Henry realized that he was about to land in a piney forest. The descent had happened quickly at the last; it now seemed little more than a dream.

–But who was the dreamer? Henry thought.

Henry instinctively drew up his legs and tucked in his chin, covering his face and head with his arms. He hit hard enough to knock the breath out of him yet again. The parachute caught in the branches and, for a moment, all was still. No birds sang. The wind in the pine boughs was the only sound.

Henry hung high above the forest floor. He found his knife and, after swinging close enough to grasp what seemed like a sturdy limb, he cut the cords. He promptly fell branch after branch to the floor below, landing on his back on the loamy turf. He lay there for perhaps thirty seconds, waiting for severe pain that did not come. Finally, he turned his head to the right, and the first thing he saw was an enormous white rabbit the size of a beagle, much larger than the wild, scrawny brown rabbits he had shot as a child in eastern North America. It twitched its white whiskers, blinked its pink eyes, but otherwise seemed sagely incurious about Henry Rann lying there in a Czech forest after having fallen some 20,000 feet out of the sky.

The next thing Henry saw was a boy about thirteen years old. He stood behind a tree, not far from the rabbit, and his gaze was decidedly more interested in Henry than the rabbit’s.

“Verstecken Sie mich!” Henry said.

“Nein! Nein!” The boy said, then, “Hier! Der Terrorflieger!”

The boy ran quickly and scooped up the white rabbit. He held it clutched tightly to his chest as he watched Henry with a mixture of fear and hatred. Henry heard the sound of twigs snapping and underbrush cracking as a group of men approached. They looked like ordinary civilians, none too wealthy, all raggedly dressed except for one much fatter fellow dressed in a piecemeal German uniform of sorts. The town mayor, no doubt. Or the law. Or both. He was armed with a pistol that looked so antique he might have carried it in World War I. The other men were armed with pitchforks and shovel handles and plain, old big sticks, like villagers come to kill the Frankenstein monster.

The fat man, panting, approached Henry, who by now had stood up.
“Lassen Sie Ihre Waffe fallen,” he said.

Henry did not respond. The official repeated the question, and Henry answered, “Ich bin ein Amerikaner. Ich �bergebe.”

The official approached and roughly slapped at Henry’s pockets. He felt something in a breast pocket and he backed away, brandishing his pistol.

“Was ist das?” He shouted. “Nehmen Sie es langsam aus Ihrer Tasche heraus.” His voice was rising. The man was shaking, and Henry could see the fear in the others as well.

“I don’t understand. I know only a few stock phrases,” Henry said. “I don’t have a gun.” Few airmen carried .45s, though they were allowed. If you were shot down behind enemy lines, there was little you could do with a .45 except brandish it long enough for a Nazi to shoot you.

Suddenly one of the men swung his shovel handle at Henry’s head, and Henry went face down into darkness. The others moved in to finish the beating. He came back to consciousness when a blow to his lower back ignited a pain that nearly brought him off the ground and to his feet.

“Schei�ekopf!” Someone said.

“Terrorflieger!’ Someone else.

“Was ist das?” Another voice, different.

“Er wird bewaffnet. Wir entwaffneten ihn,” the fat official said.

The blows had stopped; Henry opened his eyes. A Nazi officer in a black uniform held a P-38 to the head of the fat official, who knelt before him, nearly groveling.

“Sie waren T�tung er,” he said. Then, to one of two ordinary German soldiers accompanying him, ” Suchen Sie ihn.”

The private stepped quickly to where Henry lay and pushed him onto his back with one foot. He quickly patted him down, taking a fountain pen from Henry’s breast pocket.

“Nizza Feder,” he said, putting the pen in his pocket.

“Dummkopf,” the Nazi officer said, clipping the Czech official above his eye with the butt of the Walther. The man fell back, then got up again on his knees, a cut bleeding just above his left eye.

“That’s my pen. My father gave it to me,” Henry said, still lying on the ground.

The private looked at him, uncomprehending, until the officer said, “Geben Sie es zur�ck zu ihm.”

The private did not hesitate, but tucked the pen back into the shirt pocket and neatly buttoned the flap.

“Stehen Sie ihn oben. Sehen Sie, wenn er geht.”

Another private hurried over, and the two soldiers picked Henry up. He was sore and disoriented, but able to walk, supported between them. The Czechs watched the Germans take him away. As Henry and his captors left, the Nazi officer turned to the villagers and said, “Wenn Sie keine Amerikaner finden, der Versuch, zum sich sind an sie zu erinnern wertvolleres lebendiges.”

Together the Germans and Henry walked about a quarter mile to a Nazi Panzerkampfwagen parked alongside the road. The two soldiers put Henry in the back of the car, and to the surprise of all of them, the Nazi officer got into the back beside Henry as well. The two soldiers sat up front.