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 fork. ‘Not very sharp,’ she says.
‘Who needs them, anyway?’ says Bill. ‘This is awful food.’
‘Oh, it looks all right. I’m hungry. I only had a cup of coffee for my breakfast. There wasn’t time.’
‘You can eat mine too,’ says Bill. ‘I stick as far as possible to a very sensible diet. This stuff is poison, full of toxics and chemicals. It’s far too Yin.’
‘I know,’ said Lise. ‘But considering it’s a snack on a plane —’
‘You know what Yin is?’ he says.
She says, ‘Well, sort of …’in a vaguely embarrassed way, ‘but it’s only a snack, isn’t it?’
‘You understand what Yin is?’
‘Well, something sort of like this — all bitty.’
‘No, Lise,’ he says.
‘Well it’s a kind of slang, isn’t it? You say a thing’s a bit too yin …’; plainly she is groping.
‘Yin,’ says Bill, ‘is the opposite of Yang.’
She giggles and, half-rising, starts searching with her eyes for the man who is still on her mind.
‘This is serious,’ Bill says, pulling her roughly back into her seat. She laughs and begins to eat.
‘Yin and Yang are philosophies,’ he says. ‘Yin represents space. Its colour is purple. Its element is water. It is external. That salami is Yin and those olives are Yin. They are full of toxics. Have you ever heard of macrobiotic food?’
‘No, what is it?’ she says cutting into the open salami sandwich.
‘You’ve got a lot to learn. Rice, unpolished rice is the basis of macrobiotics. I’m going to start a centre in Naples next week. It is a cleansing diet. Physically, mentally and spiritually.’
‘I hate rice,’ she says.
‘No, you only think you do. He who hath ears let him hear.’ He smiles widely towards her, he breathes into her face and touches her knee. She eats on with composure. ‘I’m an Enlightenment Leader in the movement,’ he says.
The stewardess comes with two long metal pots. ‘Tea or coffee?’ ‘Coffee,’ says Lise, holding out her plastic cup, her arm stretched in front of Bill. When this is done, ‘For you, sir?’ says the stewardess.
Bill places his hand over his cup and benignly shakes his head.
‘Don’t you want anything to eat, sir?’ says the stewardess, regarding Bill’s untouched tray.
‘No, thank you,’ says Bill.
Lise says, ‘I’ll eat it. Or at least, some of it.’
The stewardess passes on to the next row, unconcerned.
‘Coffee is Yin,’ says Bill.
Lise looks towards his tray. ‘Are you sure you don’t want that open sandwich? It’s delicious. I’ll eat it if you don’t want it. After all, it’s paid for, isn’t it?’
‘Help yourself,’ he says. ‘You’ll soon change your eating habits, though, now that we’ve got to know each other.’
‘Whatever do you eat when you travel abroad?’ Lise says, exchanging his tray for hers, retaining only her coffee.
‘I carry my diet with me. I never eat in restaurants and hotels unless I have to. And if I do, I choose very carefully. I go where I can get a little fish, maybe, and rice, and perhaps a bit of goat’s cheese. Which are Yang. Cream cheese — in fact butter, milk, anything that comes from the cow — is too Yin. You become what you eat. Eat cow and you become cow.
A hand, fluttering a sheet of white paper, intervenes from behind them.
They turn to see what is being offered. Bill grasps the paper. It is the log of the plane’s flight, informing the passengers as to the altitude, speed and present geographical position, and requesting them to read it and pass it on.
Lise continues to look back, having caught sight of the face behind her. In the window seat, next to a comfortably plump woman and a young girl in her teens, is a sick-looking man, his eyes yellow-brown and watery, deep-set in their sockets, his face pale green. It was he who had handed forward the chart. Lise stares, her lips parted slightly, and she frowns as if speculating on the man’s identity. He looks away, first out of the window, then down towards the floor, embarrassed. The woman does not change her expression, but the young girl, understanding Lise to be questioning by her stare the man behind, says, ‘It’s only the flight chart.’ But Lise stares on. The sick-looking man looks at his companions and then down at his knees, and Lise’s stare does not appear to be helping his sickness.