CHAPTER EIGHT
Elsa Orsós had been born on the banks of the Danube on a snowy night in January of 1941, just a few days after her country signed of the Treaty of Eternal Friendship between with Yugoslavia. Her father was a barrister, and her mother had three small children to raise. And almost before Elsa could crawl her nation was embroiled in the war that was ripping through the world with sundering force. By the time she was starting school the Reconstruction was in full force, and the Hungarian Communist Party gaining momentum.
The turmoil that had rocked Eastern Europe all through Elsa's childhood had hardly touched her, at least after the guns had ceased to fire and bring with them waking nightmares. Love compensated for poverty, and the abundance of affection in her large extended family more than sheltered her from the political uproar raging around her. She was an intelligent girl, and did well in school, and she dreamed of becoming a doctor.
Universities in Communist Europe were not easily accessible to lower-middle class women, however, and Elsa stood little chance of realizing her dreams. Yet her parents were determined that their daughter should succeed as well as their sons. When Elsa was twelve they found a tutor to teach her English, and somehow her father had raised enough money to send her to the United States. There, he promised, she would have the freedom to study what she wanted to and to be whatever she wished to be. The emigration had not been easy, but Elsa escaped just before the tensions escalated to very nearly disastrous levels, and she had found herself enrolled in the pre-med program at Columbia University in New York City.
She had been just nineteen when she had left her family behind, and those early years had been difficult as she struggled to support herself, to succeed in school, and to cope with the loneliness of sudden solitude in a strange country. Her books were her dearest friends. She could read French as well as English and Hungarian, and she sped through classics in each of her three languages. Her English vocabulary was influenced accordingly, so that her accented tongue acquired a formal lilt that gave her trouble among her fellow students but impressed the faculty with a sense of her professionalism. Elsa became an American citizen, and soon she was on a full scholarship at Columbia, bound for the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
That same summer, however, she had taken an elective in electronic engineering, and all thoughts of becoming a doctor had fled. There was nothing more captivating than the workings of these radical new machines. Elsa turned down the scholarship and threw herself into the world of this new science. She transferred from pre-med to pure science, and as soon as she had her bachelors' degree she made her way across the unthinkably enormous country to the California Institute of Technology, where some of the most advanced research into the potential and applications of electronics was taking place.
In California, Elsa discovered a new obstacle. Women interested in medicine were perhaps not as common as they might have been, but they were generally accepted. Women interested in computers and jet propulsion were not. She had to endure slights and disparagement from her fellow students, from the faculty, and indeed from everyone else who learned what she was studying. Had it not been for the letters from home, Elsa would never have survived that first year on the west coast. In her first summer in California she had discovered the budding feminist movement, an underground of young women tired of the roles being forced upon them by a male-dominated society. At last she had a social network again, and she thrived within it. They gave her words to express her frustration at the country that was supposed to be free, but was not.
After failing to "qualify" for graduate studies, Elsa turned her attentions elsewhere, and found her way onto the payroll at NASA. She had been with them now for six years, and she had not lied to Calavicci when she had said she was one of the best programmers they had.
Calavicci. As Elsa strode away from the perimeter fence and back to the Apollo simulation hangar she thought about him. A dirty-minded, odious little man, cocky, overconfident, andtoo wrapped up in his own sense of self to bother with the thoughts and feelings of others. She wasn't fooled by his charm—his dago charm, they would have said in New York. He was exactly the kind of man who had been holding her back all of these years.
Yet he was charming. When he looked at you and told you you were gorgeous you couldn't help but believe him…
Which was worst of all! If you thought of yourself as sexually attractive, if you thought of yourself as beguiling and feminine, you were doing the men's work for them. You had to be cold and in control, or they would never accept you as a professional.
She knew that Calavicci was just like all the others, but she had thought that he was stronger than this. His attack in the LEMS on Friday had been unexpected and terrible to watch, but not as unexpected as the despondency and defeat that had resounded through his biting retorts just now. He was quitting. He was giving up. Elsa couldn't say why, but that grieved and angered her. After the screaming match in the cafeteria last week she had looked through his files, and she knew what he had survived. It was hard to watch him giving in to the specters of his own mind without even trying to fight back.
She would never admit that she felt this way, but it was nothing less than a tragedy.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAl stood in the middle of his bedroom. He didn't know what made him feel less sane: what he was about to do, or the terror that closed upon his heart at the thought of doing it. He glanced at the nightstand, on which he had set the jot-notes he had taken during the ten-minute session he had just had with the shrink who had proclaimed him unfit for spaceflight. The psychiatrist had wanted to sign him up for therapy sessions, but there wasn't a chance in hell of that happening. Al had had his fill of psychologists at Balboa. If he wasn't crazy, he didn't need an alienist. If he was crazy, he didn't want anybody to know.
And this way if he didn't succeed the only one who would be aware of the ignominy of defeat would be himself.
He bent and removed his shoes, setting them neatly under the bed. Then he picked up the bottle of water and the cup that he had brought with him from the kitchen, switched off the bedroom light and stepped into the closet.
It took some fumbling to drag the louvered doors closed from the inside, but he managed it. He was alone in the narrow darkness. Taking a slow, deep breath, Al sank to his knees, then sat with his back to the wall and his toes pointing down the length of the closet. The carpeting was soft and warm. In fact, the whole closet was warm. He hugged his knees to his chest and rested his chin upon them, his mind running through lists of truths in an attempt to maintain serenity. This wasn't a hole deep in the jungle. It wasn't a dark hooch equipped with manacles and ankle stocks. This was his closet in his bedroom in the apartment just off of the base at Cape Canaveral. His uniforms were brushing against his head, and beyond them were his newly acquired polyester shirts, brilliantly colored with artificial dyes. He was safe here. Any time he wanted, he could get out.
Why, then, why was his chest constricting, and his heart pounding in his chest, and his mind protesting that he had to get out of here?
He tried to pour himself a little water. There was water in here. It couldn't be a dangerous place if there was water. Quon didn't give you water when you were being "punished"—not until he was afraid you were going to die of dehydration, and then it would be dirty; boiled so that it wouldn't make you seriously ill (a nicety the VC only bothered with when they were afraid you would croak), but intentionally befouled with sand or mud or crumbled bits of sulphur as a petty degradation. If there was water here, clear water, then there was nothing to be afraid of.
His hands were shaking so badly that he spilled the cool fluid all over the floor, soaking his socks. Socks. His mind siezed upon the word. Quon didn't let his prisoners have socks. They weren't allowed in the Hilton either. In Briarpatch in winter the camp commander had issued them, but only to his favorites and sometimes the very sick. That kid from Arkansas with pneumonia, they'd given him socks. He needed penicillin, but instead they gave him socks, so his feet wouldn't be cold on the road to the afterlife. He had drowned on dry land, strangled by his own lungs. Unable to breathe.
Al couldn't breathe. He couldn't. He felt the sweat beading on his forehead and soaking his shirt. He fumbled with the buttons and pulled the garment off, tossing it away into the opposite corner of the closet. The wet socks were constricting his feet, and he peeled them down over his toes, too. For a minute that helped. There was less pressure now. He felt like he had been in here for hours.
His throat was dry. It was dark in here. At Hoa Lo the darkness was a blessing. They couldn't do anything really terrible to you without a little light to see by. Unless they bound you up in impossible positions and left you alone without light to think about your bad attitude.
He could hear Thumbscrew's broken English now. "You black criminal. You duped by corporate villains of Wall Street. Confess bad crimes. Ask we forgive. Peace-loving people of Vietnam forgive black Air Pirate."
It was hot in here. This space was too small for a man. Al bit his lip and tried to keep his breath even. He was stronger than this.
The pain of the broken collarbone, the dislocated shoulder, the cracked wrist and sprained ankle, bruised ribs and God only knew how many other injuries, all not merely neglected but aggravated and in some cases even caused by his captors, hadn't been enough to cow Bingo. Delirious with agony though he was, he had croaked out the mandatory chant. Name, rank, serial number, birth date. Thumbscrew had struck him with a closed fist. Bingo had spat, more blood and bile than actual saliva. They hadn't given him his water ration that day, and his mouth was so dry…
They had left him there, in the dark. With the dirty rag rammed into his mouth he couldn't scream. His nostrils were caked with blood and breathing was difficult. The agony of the ropes and the weight of his not-yet-malnourished body on battered limbs had been beyond comprehension. And the darkness, as he hung against the wall, was a blanket of oppression, enveloping him as completely as the pain.
The darkness... Al knew he was breathing too quickly. His head felt light with hypoxia. The pressure on his chest prevented him from inhaling any deeper.
With trembling hands he brought the water bottle to his lips, but they were quivering so badly that most of the fluid ran down his chin and landed on his bare chest. The feeling of being half-naked was familiar, too. It made him feel instantly filthy, as if he could sense the dirt again, the grime that he had worn like a second skin for so long.
No! He was clean. He was safe. The walls weren't closing in: that was just his imagination. He could breathe. If he just tried hard enough, he would be able to breathe.
That was all a lie, he realized with despair. He was going to die in here. He was going to suffocate, and the walls would crush him into a mangled lump of flesh. Unidentifiable. Beth would never know what had happened to him… Beth was gone! She was gone!
He hammered on the door, screaming at them to let him out. There was no room in here. He couldn't breathe. Soon he wouldn't be able to move. He screamed and screamed, sucking in shallow, hasty mouthfuls of air between the exclamations, but of course no one came to let him out.
Somehow a fleeting shadow of rationality seized control over his limbs and he hauled the door open, just far enough to allow his slight frame through the gap. He crawled out, trembling and hyperventilating, and dragged himself on hands and knees as far from the closet as he could. His limbs shook and his chest heaved. He lay on the floor, gasping for air and trying desperately to calm himself. His face was wet, and he realized that twin rivers of tears were running down his cheeks. He flinched in humiliation as he wiped them away as quickly as he could. This was exactly why he didn't want a psychiatrist around.
Gradually his breathing levelled and his frantic heartbeat slowed. He curled his limbs in towards his body and fell into an exhausted sleep on the bedroom floor.